If I Die By Sunrise

The End

Great, I thought staring at the now empty place where Cleo was standing just a second ago, now what are we going to do?

"Good riddance." Jerry muttered, running his fingers through his hair.

I stared at him, incredulous. "She was the only help we had!" I cried. "Now we have to do this alone."

Jerry shook his head. "She wasn't going to be any help. Did you forget that just two seconds ago she was about to rip you into shreds?" His dark eyes bore into mine.

I shuddered. He had a point. But I had one too. It occurred to me then, that I had to reason with him, somehow. "Jerry, we are going to die," I whispered, trying not to wince at the fear in my own voice. "I know for a fact that anything Cleo was going to do to me would have been way more merciful than anything Demetria and the Order will do."

"Are you saying that you'd rather die than fight them?" He gritted out, inching closer to me, "Because that would be absurd, Charley."

"Yes," I frown, seeing that there was no way of avoiding telling him the truth this time. "That is what I'm saying."

He threw his hands in the air, exasperated with this conversation.

"You said it yourself, there are enough monsters in the world. You don't want to turn me and I don't want that either. Not to mention, we are incredibly outnumbered and unarmed. I couldn't even kill you, how can you expect me to kill a whole army of vampires?"

To my surprise, he smirked. "Then, Charley, we're going to have to give in."

My mouth fell open. "What?"

"We are outnumbered and unarmed, but we do have the one thing that they don't have - a real, bonafide empath."

I balked. "What do you think I can do? I can't even control my powers!"

He shrugged. "Doesn't matter. They don't know that. To them, you're a threat, a danger and they're more afraid of you than we are of them."

I pondered that. It made sense, truly it did. But it didn't lessen my panic. "So what you're hinting at is you want me to pretend like I know what I'm doing?"

He nodded. "We can scare them."

"Are you crazy?"

Jerry came closer to me and I could feel his cold breath ghost across my skin, raising goosebumps. My eyes met his, and I stayed there staring him down, defiant. His voice was harsh as he explained: "This is a war, Charley. I'm willing to do everything I can to ensure we make it out in one piece," he sighed then, tone changing to pleading. "I need you to work with me here." But all I kept thinking about was that our very lives depended on my acting skills, and that thought was as scary as it was ridiculous.

"No, no, no." I whispered.

"Charley," He begged, "we don't have much time left. You're brave, so much braver than anyone gives you credit for. Look how you came to fight me by yourself. That takes guts. You can do this."

I wanted to turn him down. Ask him to consider alternatives, but I knew that our options were severely limited. Maybe I could do it? Maybe I could act as if I could hurt them, that I wasn't a force to be messed with.

It was batshit crazy and stupid, but what other choice did we have? I found myself nodding. "Okay."

He studied my face for signs of apprehension, and I'm sure he found a lot, but there was hope in his voice when he asked: "Really?"

"We have no choice other than surrendering and I don't think that would go very well."

He apparently agreed, because the next thing I knew I was in his arms, in his embrace. And I thought about my life; I was really going to save Jerry, because my entire existence also hung in the balance. These circumstances were more than just sucky, they downright blowed. But I had no other choice.